1813 battle during the War of the Sixth Coalition
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125miles
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current battle
Napoleon in command
Napoleon not in command
In the
Battle of Lutzen
(German:
Schlacht von Großgorschen
, 2 May 1813),
Napoleon I of France
defeated an allied army of the
Sixth Coalition
.
The
Russian
commander, Prince
Peter Wittgenstein
, attempting to forestall Napoleon's capture of
Leipzig
, attacked the French right wing near
Lutzen
,
Saxony-Anhalt
,
Germany
, surprising Napoleon. Recovering quickly, Napoleon ordered a
double envelopment
of the allies. After a day of heavy fighting, the imminent encirclement of his army prompted Wittgenstein to retreat. Due to a shortage of
cavalry
, the French did not pursue.
The two armies would clash again in the
Battle of Bautzen
three weeks later.
Prelude
[
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]
Following the disaster of
French invasion of Russia
in 1812, a new coalition consisting of Britain, Sweden, Prussia and Russia formed against France. In response to this, Napoleon hastily assembled an army of just over 200,000 which included inexperienced recruits, troops from Spain and garrison battalions but was severely short of horses (a consequence of the Russian invasion, where most of his veteran troops and horses had perished). He crossed the
Rhine
into Germany to link up with remnants of his old
Grande Armee
under the command of Prince
Eugene de Beauharnais
, and to quickly defeat this new alliance before it became too strong.
On the 30 April, Napoleon crossed the river
Saale
, advancing on Leipzig from the west and southwest in three columns led by the V Corps under General
Jacques Lauriston
. His intention was to work his way into the Coalition's interior lines, dividing their forces and defeating them in detail before they could combine. But due to the lack of cavalrymen and faulty reconnaissance, he was unaware of the Russo-Prussian army under Wittgenstein and
Graf
(
Count
)
von Blucher
concentrating on his right flank to the southeast. Prussian scouts reported that the French army was stretched between Naumberg and Leipzig. Wittgenstein's plan was to attack towards Lutzen and split Napoleon's forces in two. He was hoping to inflict serious casualties on Napoleon and score a victory that could possibly be used to bring Austria into the Coalition. On the eve of the battle, one of Napoleon's marshals,
Jean-Baptiste Bessieres
, was killed by a stray cannonball while reconnoitering near
Rippach
.
Marshal
Ney's
III Corps
was to hold the right flank around Lutzen in support of the forces marching towards Leipzig and was caught by surprise. The
III Corps
consisted of five infantry divisions and a cavalry brigade. Three of these divisions were situated around Lutzen, one division in the four villages to the southeast (Kaja, Kleingorschen, Großgorschen and Rahna) and one division a mile to the west of these in Starsiedel. The French
VI Corps
under Marshal Marmont was at Rippach to the west, Bertrand's
IV Corps
was south of Weissenfels (
Weißenfels
) where the
Imperial Guard
was also located. Macdonald's
XI Corps
and the
I Cavalry Corps
were situated to the north of Lutzen.
Battle
[
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]
The Prussian attack started off late with Blucher leading with his corps about 11:30am. As they approached Großgorschen, he was only expecting a couple thousand French instead of the full division that he found. Blucher paused the attack, called up his artillery and started an artillery bombardment at about noon. Marmont to the west heard the sound of the cannon and moved his corps towards Starsiedel. After a 40 minute bombardment, Blucher sent in one brigade that drove the French out of Großgorschen then followed up with another brigade and cavalry that captured Kleingorschen and Rahna. Ney put himself at the head of one of his divisions moving south from Lutzen and counterattacked, retaking Kleingorschen and Rahna. Blucher committed his last brigade about 2:00pm, which forced the French out of Kleingorschen and then advanced to Kaja. Blucher was wounded, leaving the Prussian forces to the command of General von Yorck.
Napoleon was visiting the
1632 battlefield
, playing tour guide with his staff by pointing to the sites and describing the events of 1632, in detail from memory, when he heard the sound of cannon. He immediately cut the tour short and rode off towards the direction of the artillery fire. Arriving on the scene about 2:00pm, he quickly sized up the situation and sent orders to concentrate his forces. He sent Ney a steady stream of reinforcements which would take up positions in and around the villages south of Lutzen. Yorck committed the recently arrived Prussian reserves about 4:00pm. Wittgenstein and Yorck continued to press Ney in the center; control of the villages switched hands multiple times as troops were committed from both sides. The King of Prussia personally led a charge of the Prussian Guard that took the village of Rahna. By 5:30pm, the Coalition held all of the villages except for Kaja, which was still contested. Once Bertrand's IV Corps approached the battlefield from his right and Macdonald's XI Corps from his left, Napoleon no longer needed to worry about his flanks.
Once the Coalition's advance had been halted, with perfect timing, Napoleon struck back. While he had been reinforcing Ney, he had also reinforced the guns of the III Corps and VI Corps located between Starsiedel and Rahna with the Guard's cannons. General
Drouot
concentrated these into a great mass of artillery of about 100 guns (
Grande Batterie
) that unleashed a devastating barrage on Wittgenstein's center. Napoleon had collected his
Imperial Guard
behind these guns and sent them in a counter assault led by Marshal Mortier into the allied center at about 6:00pm, which cleared the Coalition forces from the villages. A Prussian cavalry attack, and encroaching darkness, slowed the French offensive, allowing the main Coalition army to retreat in good order to regroup south of the villages. The lack of French cavalry prevented pursuit.
Napoleon lost 19,655 men, including 2,757 killed and 16,898 wounded, including one of his marshals, while the Prussians lost at least 8,500 men killed or wounded and the Russians lost 3,500 men killed, wounded or missing,
although casualties may have been much higher.
[5]
By nightfall, the Tsar and Wittgenstein were hardly convinced that they had lost the battle. They retreated, however, after hearing that Leipzig had fallen, leaving Napoleon in control of Lutzen and the field.
Aftermath
[
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]
Napoleon demonstrated his usual prowess in driving back the Russo-Prussian force at Lutzen, but the costliness of his victory had a major impact on the war. Lutzen was followed by the
Battle of Bautzen
eighteen days later, where Napoleon was again victorious but with the loss of another 22,000 men, twice as many as the Russo-Prussian army.
The ferocity of these two battles prompted Napoleon to accept a temporary armistice on June 4 with Tsar Alexander and King Frederick William III. This agreement provided the allies the respite to organise and re-equip their armies and, perhaps more importantly, encouraged Britain to provide Russia and Prussia with war subsidies totalling seven million pounds.
The financial security offered by this agreement was a major boon to the war effort against Napoleon. Another important result of the battle was that it encouraged
Austria
to join the allied Coalition upon the armistice's expiration, shifting the balance of power dramatically in the Coalition's favor.
Due to these developments, Napoleon later regarded the June 4 truce, bought at Lutzen and Bautzen, as the undoing of his power in Germany.
During the battle of Lutzen,
Gerhard von Scharnhorst
, one of the brightest and most able Prussian generals, was wounded while serving as Wittgenstein's Chief of Staff. Although his wound was minor, the hasty retreat prevented proper treatment, allowing a fatal infection to set in.
Notes
[
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]
References
[
edit
]
- Bodart, Gaston (1908).
Militar-historisches Kriegs-Lexikon (1618-1905)
(in German). Vienna and Leipzig: C.W. Stern
. Retrieved
3 February
2024
– via Internet Archive.
- Chandler, David G.
(2009).
The Campaigns of Napoleon. The mind and method of history's greatest soldier
. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Clark, Christopher C. (2006).
Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947
. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
ISBN
978-0-674-02385-7
.
- Dupuy, R. Ernest; Dupuy, Trevor N. (1986).
The Encyclopedia of Military History: From 3500 B.C. to the Present
(2nd ed.). Harper & Row Publishers.
ISBN
0061812358
.
- Leggiere, Michael V.
(2015).
Napoleon and the Struggle for Germany
. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press.
ISBN
978-1107080515
.
- Pigeard, Alain (2004).
Dictionnaire des batailles de Napoleon
(in French). Editions Tallandier.
ISBN
2847340734
.
- Smith, Digby
(1998).
The Napoleonic Wars Data Book
. Greenhill.
ISBN
1853672769
.
- Tulard, Jean
(1999).
Dictionnaire Napoleon
. Vol. I-Z. Paris: Fayard.
ISBN
2-213-60485-1
.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Clark, Christopher M. (2006).
Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947
. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
ISBN
9780674023857
. Retrieved
3 February
2024
– via Internet Archive.
- Lawford, James (1979).
Napoleon, The Last Campaigns 1813-1815
. New York: Crown Publishers.
- Lorraine, Petre F. (1977).
Napoleon's Last Campaign in Germany in 1813
. New York: Hippocrene Books, Inc.
- Nafziger, George (1992).
Lutzen and Bautzen: Napoleon's Spring Campaign of 1813
. Chicago: Emperor's Press.
- Wimble, Ed (1999).
La Bataille de Lutzen
[Board game]. Phoenixville, Pennsylvania:
Clash of Arms Games
.
External links
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]
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